Send in the Clowns
by Issay
Summary: Donna started out as a would-be-actress and ended up as the best damn executive assistant there was. That and everything in between.


When she's fifteen she plays Ophelia in her school's "Hamlet" and she loves every second of it. Even though she has to spend a lot of extra time after classes on that small stage, that's exactly where she wants to be. The lights, the thrill of someone else's words on her lips and she saw projects of costumes, just extraordinary (or so she thinks then - in another fifteen years she'll go back to this memory and laugh because that dress was really awful). Donna craves the attention and makes sure that every single person she knows is there to see her debut.

Her mother is proud of her baby girl.

Her father just shakes his head.

"You are going to be a great actress one day, miss Paulsen," says her art teacher, Mr Chaikovsky after her performance and she almost hugs him. It takes Donna a second to remember that all the great actresses are distanced and dignified so she simply smiles and thanks in her best humble voice. She's going to be the best damned actress in the world.

Or so she hopes.

* * *

When she's eighteen, she's off to New York with her head packed with dreams and hopes. She finds a cheap place to live, shares it with a group of other young and hopelessly talented, as they call themselves. When they're not looking for jobs, they smoke weed, drink and sing stupid little songs, and she's having the time of her life. She doesn't miss home, not really, she's too excited. After a couple of days she gets her first real tv role - a criminal procedural drama, and she's so damn proud of herself.

She's "Female #3" and says only one line. "I saw him, he went left".

Donna makes sure that it'll be the most perfectly delivered one line in this whole episode.

* * *

She's nineteen when she goes back home, dreams shattered and no money in her pocket. Donna refuses to hear her sisters snickering and father's bitter tone when he says that at least this madness of hers lasted less than a year. It's surprisingly easy to pretend it doesn't hurt. She cries only when one night her mother comes to her room and with a gentle hand holds her youngest, oh so broken-hearted daughter.

After two days of mourning her dream of being an actress, Donna dries her eyes and decides. She'll be a secretary. No, not a secretary. An executive assistant.

Yes, this is something she can do. Another role to slip into, with distance and dignity. This way she can put all the shards of her dreams of Broadway and Hollywood in a little box (she does – all of her photos from New York and five pages of various scripts end up in a wooden jewel case, carefully forgotten)

And she'll be the best executive assistant the world has ever seen.

* * *

She's twenty two when she meets Harvey Specter and, to be absolutely honest, she's less than impressed. He's good looking and quite well dressed but cocky and full of himself to an extent that makes Donna want to snap at him. And snap she does - he's so surprised that he doesn't know what to even say. Donna smiles. The next day he shows up by her desk with a bouquet of pink roses and carefully worded apology. She accepts.

He's someone she can work with, as it turns out. She already knows how to shape him into a successful yet not dead-on-the-inside lawyer. Someone who will be a good friend, loyal to the end (she doesn't know it yet but that's the one trait he already has), compassionate but not overly emotional. Yes.

The best lawyer and his best executive assistant.

* * *

She's twenty three when she meets Gordon Specter and completely falls in love with this man. Ten minutes after seeing him for the first time she already knows that this is how she imagines Harvey in the future. But Gordon is a bit different - warmer and Donna feels like she could cry because her father was never so fatherly as this stranger is. All she can do is hope that one day Harvey will be like this strange, kind man with laughter in his eyes and melody in his voice.

"Don't let go of your dream," he says when they spend one evening together, Harvey on a case that just came up, leaving them alone with wine and some jazz in the background.

She cries. Gordon holds her and hums "Summertime". After she's done crying, he compliments her eyes (tells her that Harvey's grandmother recommended a good cry for keeping eyes beautiful and shiny, she laughs).

They never talk about it.

* * *

She's twenty seven when she realizes that she has been in love with Harvey Specter ever since she saw him in DA's office in a gray suit and burgundy tie.

Donna whispers that into Gordon's ear when she says goodbye to him during the funeral and blinks away her tears. The last secret for him to keep. Maybe the most important. And it breaks her heart because it's too soon and it's so unfair. People like the Specters deserve to have it all and yet life refuses to obey their willpower.

She doesn't even shed a tear. Harvey spends the two days following the burial with her, his fingers clasping her hands and she has to be strong because right now he can't be. So she is. Because that's how they work.

Best friends.

* * *

She's thirty when she makes her peace with the fact that Harvey is the love of her life and that he'll never be hers.

Somewhere around that time she starts browsing through casting news, not because she needs money, God forbid, but she's restless. She sees an ad that a theater is looking for an Ophelia understudy but they want an actress not older than twenty nine.

She smiles bitterly because she had waited for so long, it's not even a surprise that she had waited for too long. Life, after all, moves on and so should she. So Donna puts away the paper and makes herself a cup of tea because it's okay. She learned to live without so many things in her life, it's not a big deal to leave this old dream once and for all in the past.

Or so she says to herself.

* * *

„I'm thirty five this year, Harvey," she says, annoyed when he says something about her going out on a date. „Men aren't exactly lining up in front of my door."

She doesn't have time to waste. She starred in a play some time ago – a small production with mostly amateur actors like herself but nevertheless it was fun, she has a couple of good friends, huge network of useful acquaintances and is the best damn executive assistant this world has ever seen. Just like she told herself all those years ago, she knows she should be proud and in a way she is But she's not happy. Donna knows that she'll probably never be but refuses to believe it because it would probably break her. So she settles on giving good advice to Rachel (it's a bit like seeing her own younger self, not that she would say it out loud), not getting in Jessica's way and avoiding going out on a date with Louis Litt.

She's so caught up in her denial that it makes her miss the strange look he's giving her.

* * *

She's thirty five when he kisses her in the middle of the damn firm during working hours. It's possessive and almost bruising and so perfectly _Harvey_ she forgets about about that dozen people watching them. Someone whistles, someone else applauds them and the spell is broken – her face is cradled by his warm, dry hands and Donna smiles. "Finally," she wants to say. But she doesn't because there's warmth in Harvey's eyes that leaves her breathless.

Some time later Mike tells her that Louis was the one who whistled. She decides to forgive the man but only this once. She has an image to uphold, after all.

* * *

She's thirty six, she's Donna Paulsen-Specter and she's finally happy.

And she doesn't have to pretend anymore.


End file.
